Korean War Film’s Promotional Video Bombs in China

A promotional video for a new Chinese film about the Korean War has riled many Chinese who feel it disrespects South Korea, more than 60 years after China backed Seoul’s enemies to the North during the conflict.

The video, shown online, depicts 24 elderly Chinese tourists visiting the South Korean capital of Seoul. These tourists, who are actually well-known Chinese actors playing the grandparents of the film’s young actors, interrupt a Korean tour guide who is introducing them to Seoul, saying they are already familiar with the city. Many years ago, they say, they “carried red flags” of their communist government and “needed no passport” to enter the city—then called Hansung. Left unsaid was that they were part of an occupying force. The 2-minute video ends with the tourists telling the young tour guide to watch “My War,” a Chinese nationalistic film about Chinese soldiers fighting in the Korean War.

There was no immediate reaction from South Korea, but Chinese commentary online was swift and harsh, with one user calling the video “disgusting.”

“The actors smiled so happily when they uttered those words,” wrote one watcher. “As if they were not talking about a war but some farmers reminiscing spring sowing when harvesting in autumn.”

In March, South Korea handed over the remains of 36 Chinese soldiers killed in the Korean War.
Photo:
Zuma Press

The three-year war in the early 1950s--which Beijing said was to “resist America and assist North Korea,”--began when North Korea invaded the South. It ended with a divided Korean Peninsula and with an armistice rather than a peace treaty, meaning the war never officially ended.

The incident reflects lingering sensitivities over a conflict that pitted today’s great powers, the U.S. and China (alongside the Soviet Union), against each other in a proxy war that continues to dog relations. China is now strenuously protesting a missile shield the U.S. plans to install in South Korea to protect its ally against North Korea. China says the shield will further inflame tensions.

Peng Shun, the film’s director, said on his verified Weibo account on Monday that he didn’t design nor direct the video, saying it “has nothing to do with the film.” He defended the film, which follows a Chinese soldier fighting in Korea, as an attempt to reflect war’s cruelty and inhumanity.

China Film Co., a branch of the state-run China Film Group, which was recently listed on the stock market, produced the film. The company didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.

Some online Chinese comments reflected the unease they have over Beijing’s close alliance with North Korea as Pyongyang forges ahead with the development of its nuclear weapons program.

“The former ally, with whom we forged friendship by blood, now turns into a trouble maker who drops nuclear bomb every day in front of our doorstep.” wrote another online comment. “And you still apply the value and viewpoint in those years to talk about today’s issue like you live in dreams.”

Some viewers demanded a boycott of the film, which is slated to be released in mainland China on Thursday, the start of a three-day public holiday for China’s Mid-Autumn festival.

“The elderly actors must have participated in this thing following their heart instead of for money, which makes it more embarrassing and sad,” wrote Shi Hang, a veteran screenwriter, on China’s Twitter-like Weibo platform.

Others reacted on human-rights grounds.

“No war should be consumed light-heartedly,” read one commentator, who said the promotional video reflected a mentality that “represents the most cold-blooded value of war.”

Another online commentator likened the sentiment to the Nanking Massacre of 1937, when the Imperial Japanese Army massacred tens of thousands of Chinese.

“If Japanese people who travel to Nanjing boast that they’ve been there before carrying the Rising Sun Flag, How would Chinese people feel about it?” said one Weibo user.